WPR11LA487 · Piper J3C-65
Piper J3C-65 · Accident: aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person while standing
From Rohnerville Airport (FOT) to Garberville, CA
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA487
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper J3C-65
- Aircraft type
- Piper J3
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N3453K
- Operator
- Baron Fred N
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rohnerville Airport (FOT), Fortuna, CATo Garberville, CA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Standing · engine(s) start-up
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The individual attempting to start the engine by turning the propeller (hand prop) reported that, during the first attempt to start the engine, verbal callouts were used. He further reported that the pilot then told him to pull the propeller through three times. The individual said that he then motioned, without a verbal callout to the pilot, that he would pull the propeller through per the pilot's request. The pilot reported that the individual hand-propping the engine pulled the propeller through a second time before he could secure the airplane by turning off the magnetos. As the individual rotated the propeller and reached to grab the other propeller blade, the engine unexpectedly started, which resulted in the propeller striking the individual in the right arm, causing a fracture.
Probable cause
The unexpected engine start during hand propping, which resulted in a serious injury. Contributing to the accident was the lack of communication between the pilot and the individual hand propping the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA487
- Event ID
- 20120228X03455
- Case number
- WPR11LA487
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7fa682dff213dac8d0282fe3e0625a4ea844ee95122c6f0635b48eb6bc7383b3; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:20:00.076Z.